Disc is GUTTED -- This must be fixed NOW.

I've been playing WoW since wotlk. My main has always been my discipline priest. I have had some of the top healing parses in the world on progression (despite the fact that I'm in a no-name 10-man guild and i rarely upload to world of logs).I know this spec inside and out. I know how it works, how it doesn't work, and its strengths and weaknesses.

As of right now, the disc spec has been absolutely GUTTED.

During cataclysm (and wrath) discipline priests were tuned to use mana faster than other healing classes in order to push out the same amount of heals. That worked because discipline priests relied on rapture for mana regeneration. My mana regeneration in cata was routinely twice that of any other healer in my raid group, and my heals were roughly competitive (sometimes higher sometimes lower, as it should be). (We cleared heroic DW just before the 30% nerf--which was good for our guild. We take a fairly relaxed view on progression.)

The int>>mana pool>>>rapture mechanic was THE CORE of discipline play-style, because there was no other way to maintain mana with the high rate of consumption necessary to keep up. ...But it worked, because you could scale output and your regen scaled with it... it was NECESSARY to keep up.

In MoP, not only did discipline lose the core mechanic that had sustained it, it also lost divine hymn (our only big healing cooldown). ...Mana costs were not reduced in a relative fashion, nor did we receive anything to compensate for our lack of output cooldowns. ...In fact, all we really got was spirit shell (great situationally but not spammable in most fights. -- OK utility but NOT core.)

So how do you compensate? The ONLY WAY to maintain mana regeneration now is to SMITE HEAL, which has always been mediocre to terrible for throughput.

Since MoP I've been hoping and praying that I just hadn't learned it right... That maybe, somehow, if my play improved enough and adapted enough, I could overcome.I was absolutely wrong.

Discipline (outside a 25-man raid, with which I have no experience, and which relies on different mechanics) has been absolutely destroyed.

As of right now the ONLY way to even remotely keep up with other classes' heals is the following rotation:PWS > Penance > Holy Fire > Smite, Smite, Smite > Archangel > Power Infusion > Spirit Shell >> Spam PoH.

Repeat.

Do you have ANY FREAKING CLUE how ridiculous it is to try to maintain this complex a spell rotation while trying to effectively heal ANYTHING???

If you deviate from this in any direction, either mana goes out the window extremely fast or heals fall off to 60-70% of what any other class is capable of.

2. Halve the mana cost of all healing spells. (Taking off 1/3 might be enough--maybe.)

3. Double the healing quotient on smite/penance/holy fire so that it heals double the damage done.

Frankly, I don't think any of these really address the core issues, of which there are two.

1. Spells cost too much for the regen we have -- We can't compete with others' output.

2. Smite healing throughput is total shyte. TOTAL SHYTE. It always has been.

Between these two issues discipline is destroyed with the current core mechanics.

Frankly, I find this to be an example of the spectacular brand of incompetence I've come to expect from the developer community at Blizzard. Every tier, I pray that they won't touch anything to do with my class because they keep breaking things in such amateurish and ridiculous ways.

I AM A GAME DESIGNER. I KNOW OF WHAT I SPEAK.

If the team responsible for the ridiculousness that is discilpine in MoP were my employees, I WOULD FIRE THEM.

If this isn't fixed in the next month, Blizzard WILL lose my subscription.

As a long time Holy priest I am truly happy to finally see a Disc priest actually complain about his spec, and am eagerly waiting for a boss where every priest and his mother go Holy. Heaven be praised!

As a long time Holy priest I am truly happy to finally see a Disc priest actually complain about his spec, and am eagerly waiting for a boss where every priest and his mother go Holy. Heaven be praised!

I don't like the chakra system at all. It's making a flexible spec less flexible.

As a long time Holy priest I am truly happy to finally see a Disc priest actually complain about his spec, and am eagerly waiting for a boss where every priest and his mother go Holy. Heaven be praised!

I don't like the chakra system at all. It's making a flexible spec less flexible.

I on the other hand am quite happy. We got Power Infusion, and the new talent system really enhance the "flexible" aspect of the spec, perhaps too flexible but it keeps me awake at night thinking about what to choose for which boss.

As a long time Holy priest I am truly happy to finally see a Disc priest actually complain about his spec, and am eagerly waiting for a boss where every priest and his mother go Holy. Heaven be praised!

As a long time Holy priest I am truly happy to finally see a Disc priest actually complain about his spec, and am eagerly waiting for a boss where every priest and his mother go Holy. Heaven be praised!

It was called "World of Warcraft" and "The Burning Crusade" and "Early Wrath of the Lich King"

Holy needs to have it not a drop up box. Like if it were like choosing an aspect, a shape shift, a pressence, a stance, or really any other class. Well a click and click again thing is pretty bad for on the fly. Yeah I can see where hitting serenety then going into sanctuary is nice. But I liked the cata model so much more.

For disc. Well. Needing to be able to get archangel up on cooldown is a problem. Spirit shell. Well its alright. Would be better if prayer of healing did more healing than it does. It can't even get a 10 man raid all hit. Unless you don't have an ally targeted, then its on;y getting that one group. which is bad for our only aoe heal.

Now if it did more and that would effectivly make divine aegis a lot stronger for it. Now we are a spec meant to prevent damage as per its description. But in able to make it work best, we need a lot of mastery to make up for the weak healing. an insane amount of spirit to sustain it. And haste or crit to put it to work. Crit more than haste really.

Cascade with prayer of mending. Would be pretty goot of an addition if say when cascade bounces, its targets take x amount more healing from this priest. But I won't figure that one out.

But with tanks having up over 400k health and everyone over 300k health. to be fair, a 20k aoe heal with say 10k aegis. Not really fair. Yes making it heal more targets is a huge thing. but it needs to heal a bit more than what my tooltip says it does. That way we can use it in with spirit shell better. Yes the total 30k above would snag a bit more. It makkes it really strong then. But we would need to get so much more spirit. Intellect helps a lot more. Tho with our mana pool higher, we could stand to lower mana costs. Yes making us too powerful now would force a nerf later, that will get backlash. But disc has mana problems if it cannot heal with attonement.

Unless we stack haste and crit, attonement isn't helping much. Would put us needing a green crystal from ultraxions fight to use. (Perhaps synergise it with our level 90 abilities) Where whe could stack a debuff where the priest does additional holy damage to the target.

Usility wise. well we have void shift+ desperate prayer. Shieldswith more umph would make reflective shield and attonement help. Perhaps have an effect when a shield breaks, for 4 seconds it creates a light efflorescence effect. Nothing strong. It would be like 2 renew ticks based on the amount absorbed.

But in general. Priests need their mana fixed since to cast and keep up with damage, we need more spirit than we can get. But the cost of all that haste, mastery, crit. That is a huge upset when you look at %'s. Yes 2% more haste would make a difference. That could be an entire extra tick of a hot. More mastery helps class as a whole. Crit can help more. Ina fight with 500 casts from you or so. that extra 2% crit could add up.

And power word:solace. I want to use it. I really do. Fast cast, decent damage, mana back. But .7% mana back is weak for that unless if it could work with attonement. Because otherwise mindbender is superior above all else. We need mana. And if we have to cast, at least let it be able to give us mana for the time spent casting it.

And buffing the shadowfiend/mindbenders mana gains with hymn of hope... You bet I noticed how much weaker that is. I used to be able to get at least half a mana bar. outside haste bonuses made it even better. But its like 30% to 35% at best. Thats weak for a mana gain we must channel. sure help other healers is nice. But we will only have it once a fight. And we are mana hungry healers. Make the best mana return combo something we can brag about. Make us go from oom to 70% or so. Full if we pop a potion of sorts.

Really, we need to not need 10k at least combat regen to be effective for more than 3 minutes. Since after then we gotta get some back.Although guess I need to wait till I am 90 and in heroics. Once I have the spirit to carry a group through and not go oom on fights. Then I have enough. Which by then is 15k or so. Which at that point I think we should look into dps gear for more other stats.

It needs some fine tuning or developer input. Forums would not be exploding on this issue if it weren't an issue.

If I were to post a list of the games that I've worked on or lead design for, this would become a debate about how good or bad my work is, which is entirely beside the point here.

The point is that discipline priests are broken. They were broken by the changes made to intellect and mana pool (and subsequently rapture) and NOBODY BOTHERED TO FIX THE BASE ISSUES. Instead they were made WORSE by the removal of divine hymn and the "substitution" of the purely-utility ability spirit shell.

Mana for mana, discipline priests are unable to compete with the output of any other class EXCEPT using an incredibly complex rotation that just doesn't hold up in real-play situations.

This is worse than shaman healing in Firelands, and it's because the management of the design team has trouble with big-picture design problems like this one.

If I screwed up this badly I would be fired. Considering how much more in the way of resources Blizzard has for testing and quality control... This is just unbelievable.

Also -- A friend just said to me: "They're not going to do anything. This will just fix itself with gear scaling."

That isn't possible.

Before, when regen scaled with output, it COULD fix itself. Disc started out behind and it ended up pretty even because the regen DID scale with output. Now, regen and output scale separately, and discipline is at a higher base level cost than any other healer per output. The scaling will be roughly linear instead of geometric.

Being broken on a base level means it will be even more broken later. It can't even out.